


Peg Me Wrong

by poolsidescientist



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Camping, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, despite not being related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-03 14:16:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11533962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poolsidescientist/pseuds/poolsidescientist
Summary: After a difficult Father's Day Nathaniel goes camping with Darryl to take his mind off of his family problems. He's never gone camping before. Well, it's a learning experience for everyone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so this is for round two of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fan swap and is written for Lucetteriellabritton (who requested a fic featuring Nathaniel and Darryl) over on tumblr (she doesn't have an account here but runs a wonderful blog. Will post a chapter every day until the story is done. As usual I own no part of this series but am always happy for feedback. Also FYI I'm Canadian and the only state I've camped in is Vermont so apologies for any inaccuracies in here. Thank you for reading!

It was uncharacteristic for Nathaniel Plimpton to slump in his chair. Slumping was for lazy people, or so his father always told him. But there he was, angrily eating a granola bar while staring blankly at his computer screen. It was the Tuesday after father’s day, and considering how badly his family dinner had gone, slumping almost felt like an act of rebellion. By all metrics, he was the perfect son, and yet somehow his father was never satisfied with him. Nathaniel couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the thought, a childish habit he’d picked up from spending too much time with Rebecca. Rebecca, who was at the same time the smartest person he knew but also the biggest idiot he ever met. Thankfully, she had thrown herself into her work in between schemes of trying to destroy the life of one Joshua Felix Chan who was stupid enough to leave her at the altar. Whatever happened to him afterwards was natural selection and none of Nathaniel’s concern.

What was Nathaniel’s concern however was his inability to focus. It was time for coffee. Exiting his office, he noticed that it was uncharacteristically quiet. Paula had an exam, Rebecca had a lunch meeting with a client, and Karen had taken her snake to the vet. It was peaceful. At least until Darryl came over to rummage through the pantry. Nathaniel took a deep breath and braced himself for the awkward small talk to come.

“How was your weekend? Mine was great! Madison made me breakfast in bed for father’s day. She’s back with her mom’s for a bit but I just got a new tent!” He announced enthusiastically. Nathaniel raised an eyebrow.

“Darryl, we pay you well enough to afford a house.”

“No no, I paid my mortgage off years ago. This is for camping!! I can’t wait to take Madison on her first camping trip. I have so many childhood memories from out in the wilderness, you must have some too,” Darryl explained.

“Nope, never camped,” Nathaniel took a sip of his coffee, it was starting to get cold.

“What do you mean you’ve never been camping?”

“Camping is for poor people,” another saying he learned from his father.

“Hey, camping is manly. Haven’t you ever wanted to connect with nature? To be one with the wilderness?” Nathaniel couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow as by now the entire office was watching Darryl. “Besides, what kind of father doesn’t take his kids camping?”

“My father doesn’t,” Nathaniel shouted, reacting far angrier than he anticipated. Darryl looked at him with sad eyes.

“What are you doing this weekend?”

“Working. Like every other weekend.”

“Not this weekend. You’re coming camping with me!” Darryl gave him two thumbs up as he pointed to himself. Nathaniel looked down at his phone to see the long string of condescending messages from his father. He suddenly understood the desire to throw his phone in a river. 

“You know what, fine. Let’s do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised here is chapter two.

By Friday evening, Nathaniel was filled with regret. Darryl had insisted on not only driving, but on singing along with what might have been every 80’s rock song ever written. They had stopped once on the way to the campsite, at a roadside donut shop and farmer’s market. Nathaniel had bought some fruit that looked as though it passed FDA safety regulations, but Darryl had gotten himself a big box of powdered donuts. Now the entire front of the car was smeared with grease and powdered sugar. Nathaniel wiped the sugar off of his shorts. He had gotten cheap shorts specifically for this trip. No sense wasting money on something that was going to be destroyed anyways. He felt sick.

Eventually, Nathaniel and Darryl did reach the campsite. A polite and optimistic person would describe the campsite as quaint and rustic. Nathaniel would describe it as poorly maintained and full of suspicious characters. A group of bikers glared at him as they roasted hot dogs over a campfire but Nathaniel wasn’t too concerned. Most of the were old, their bodies run down from their poor lifestyle choices. He could fight them if need be. 

“You know you don’t have to pay. I can afford to stay...here Darryl,” he complained after Darryl had checked in with the front desk. 

“Nonsense! This was my idea. It’s not right that you went through an entire childhood without experiencing the wonders of the wilderness.” Darryl grinned. For all the irritating things about his co-worker, and Nathaniel could make a long list, Darryl got genuinely excited about things. And in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on but was sometimes a little envious of. 

“I’m guessing your dad took you camping often?” Nathaniel asked as he helped Darryl unload the tent from the back of the car.

“We went once a year when I was little, the best trips were with my grandfather though. He knew how to survive in the wild. And he always told the best stories around the campfire,” Darry smiled as he reminisced. Nathaniel pulled the tent parts out the bag and searched for the instructions.

“So Darryl, where are the instructions to this...thing?”

“Instructions? Ha, I threw them away.” Nathaniel raised an eyebrow, “We’re men Nathaniel, we can figure it out. We just need to put all the right parts together.”

“That would be easier to do if we knew what we were doing.” 

“But where’s the adventure in that?”

“I don’t know about you but I like having shelter.”

“And we will. As soon as we set up the tent!” 

It was at that point Nathaniel realised that arguing with Darryl would get him nowhere. It he wanted an, albeit uncomfortable, place to sleep, he would have to figure out how to put a tent together. Darryl had already laid out the bottom part so Nathaniel decided to start working on the poles. They were new, but even then they were hard to put together. This was clearly a discount tent.

It took him half an hour, but Nathaniel eventually did manage to shove the poles together. It wasn’t the best job but he was a lawyer, not a day labourer, and Darryl didn’t seem to notice. They got stuck in the sleeves several times but they got through into where they needed to go. The tent was up. Nathaniel thought the work was done until Darryl mentioned that they had to put pegs in. There was no hammer so he grabbed a rock as though he were a desperate caveman and beat the pegs into submission. Meanwhile, Darryl was fiddling with the tent cover. The odds of rain in California were low so despite being hideous, the badly tied-on cover wouldn’t do them any harm.

“We did it! We set up the tent!” Darryl jumped up and down with excitement. If he had a tail, it would be wagging right now. “We should take a picture!” 

“No.” It was then and there that Nathaniel decided that no one at the office should know about this camping trip. God forbid his father find out. It would not help his reputation with his family.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to post, life is hectic right now. As usual I own nothing and am always keen on feedback :)

By the time they had returned from the tour of the camp grounds, the one that Darryl insisted they take, the only thing the two men had in common were their growling stomachs. Darryl was ecstatic to be away from the city, well suburbs that were West Covina. Nathaniel had a new appreciation for toilets that didn’t have spider webs on them and taps with hot water. This was not a nice place. The infrastructure was crumbling, and the only other campers was the group of bikers they had seen upon entering the grounds. There was a park for children but it was run down, rusted, and looked like it belonged in a horror movie. This was not a place for Darryl to bring his daughter.

“So Mr perfect Plimpton, have you ever lit a campfire before?” Darryl teased as he pulled a box of wood out of the car.

“If I could afford to stay at hotels as a kid I’m pretty sure my family could afford electricity.”

“Well then, you have a lot of learning to do.” He said, assembling the logs. Clearly, Darryl had done this before as he assembled a pyramid shape of small logs, with twigs and branches on the inside and finally newspaper in the middle. Nathaniel had never seen Darryl this focused before. Maybe that's how he was in law school. It baffled him how Darryl had been able to get a law degree but here he was, and the fire he built was actually decent. Perhaps he had misjudged the man. It looked like they might actually be able to cook off of this fire.

“Since you wouldn’t let me bring any food, what exactly are we eating tonight?”

“Tonight, we are having cheese dogs and s'mores!” And Darryl was back to his usual self as he unpacked the food from the car and stacked it onto a nearby picnic table.

“Cheese dogs?”

“Absolutely. They’re not just hot dogs, they’re hotdogs with cheese in them!” Darryl pulled out a pack of plump though slightly disheveled hot dogs. Nathaniel hadn’t eaten a hot dog in over a decade.

“So how do we cook these ‘cheese dogs’?”

“With this!” Darryl threw him a stick. “You spear your meat and cook it over the fire. Makes you feel like you’re in touch with nature.”

“There is nothing natural about hot dogs,” Nathaniel complained. Nonetheless he proceeded to skewer the processed meat tube.

“It’s the experience! Just try it.”

Nathaniel had cooked before, but never over an open campfire. Aside from the occasion smoke in his eyes he found that he was actually enjoying the experience. The hot dog itself looked terrible: brown and bubbling as it was. But, it was interesting to stand there and watch the fire. Maybe there was something to Darryl’s whole ‘being one with nature’ idea. Nathaniel hadn’t touched his phone in over an hour and somehow that was okay. Eventually, the hot dogs were done and slid off of the stick onto a bun. He still refused to put ketchup on them but did add a bit of mustard before taking a bite.

Immediately, molten cheese burst out of the hotdog. It burned the inside of his mouth as it trickled down his throat.

“Sorry Nathaniel, I uh, should have warned you to wait a minute before eating that.” Darryl handed him a bottle of water. He nodded and drank it as quickly as humanly possible. He waited a few minutes before eating the rest of the hot dog. It turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant mix of nitrates, sodium, and saturated fat. From that point on he was more careful, but continued to eat several more hot dogs. The experience was pedestrian, but in a surprisingly enjoyable way. 

Darryl must have noticed his good mood and took advantage of it. He talked, and talked, and talked. Nathaniel was amazed at how long Darryl could spend talking about unimportant things. His boyfriend, Josh, was a patient man as Nathaniel assumed Darryl was normally this chatty. Not that Nathaniel was really paying attention to what Darryl was saying. He was tuning it out and watching the campfire. Now that he was out camping, he couldn’t believe that this was his first ever campfire. Even Rebecca had gone camping in her youth but not him. His family wanted to stay in hotels whenever they travelled. Nathaniel himself had always been signed up for extracurricular activities or summer courses. It felt strange to be doing nothing. But it was a good kind of strange. It was peaceful. At least until he heard Darryl screaming from the other side of the picnic table.

“THE COOLER!!!!!!!” He pointed at the overturned cooler, now surrounded by no less than six skunks. Massive skunks, well fed by the scraps left by clumsy campers. One was so round that it could hardly walk, but waddled contently.

“Hey you, that’s our food you pathetic balls of garbage.” Nathaniel threatened the skunks. They had eaten nearly everything in the cooler, including the fruit he had bought earlier at the farmer’s market. Frustrated, he picked up a rock.

“Nathaniel, no!!” Darryl cautioned as Nathaniel threw the rock at the cooler. The skunks all scattered. All except for the large one which rolled over into a handstand-like position. Realising what was about to happen, the two men ran to the other side of the picnic table and around to the far side of Darryl’s car. Seconds later they heard a splat. The skunk had sprayed the cooler, the picnic, and even the side of Darryl’s car. It all stank, and seconds later there was no longer a skunk, nor any food in sight.

“How about we make this an overnight trip?”Darryl suggested. Nathaniel could only nodd.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter!

One good thing about the rain was that it would wash away the lingering smell of skunk from the campsite. This would be the first thing an optimist would think of. Unfortunately, Nathaniel always considered himself a realist. Of course, waking up in the middle of the night to a soaking wet sleeping bag did not improve his mood.

Darryl and him had spent the rest of the evening using water from a nearby creek to get rid of the skunk smell from the cooler, picnic table, and from Darryl’s car. This was to no avail. Darryl had wanted to watch the stars but they were swarmed by mosquitoes as soon as the sun started to set. Exhausted and probably anemic, they decided to call it a night. The sleeping bag and blue foam mat were uncomfortable, but Nathaniel was too tired to complain. He ached and he smelled bad. He had slept soundly until his soggy sleeping bag woke him up. Touching the floor of the tent, Nathaniel realised that it was completely soaked. He turned his flashlight on and looked up. The tent cover had blown away and water poured down the side of the tent. Everything was soaked. And Darryl’s sleeping bag was empty. Nathaniel slipped his shoes on and went out to find him.

Darryl Whitefeather was hugging his car and sobbing in the rain. Behaviour that Nathaniel could only describe as bizarre. All he could do is blink in disbelief. At least until he was blinded by a large flashlight carried by a tough-looking biker.

“Is everything alright sir?” The biker asked as Darryl continued to sob.

“I don’t know, I just found him like this,” Nathaniel shrugged. Dealing with emotional people still wasn’t an area of strength for him. He was a lawyer, not a therapist. 

“I can’t even s-set up a tent! My grandfather, my grandfather would be so disappointed in me. My dad would be even more disappointed in me. How am I supposed to be a good father when I can’t even pitch a tent???????????????” Darryl finally said as he let go of his car and cried into the biker’s chest.

“Okay, uh, you got some issues to work through. Come with me.” He said. Darryl and Nathaniel followed him without question down the road and into the cabin that he and his biker friends had rented out.

“I, for one, could use a drink,” said Nathaniel.

“This is an Alcoholics Anonymous weekend retreat. I’ll make hot chocolate.” The biker explained. “Throttle, get these guys some blankets before they get hypothermia.” His disheveled friend with a UFO sweater grabbed some blankets for them.

“Wait, are you from West Covina? You look like my boyfriend’s friend’s sponsor before he moved to Atlanta for graduate school.” Darryl wrapped the blanket around himself.

“Atlanta. Wait, is your boyfriend’s friend named Greg by any chance?”

“Yes, Greg Serrano, my boyfriend Josh says he’s doing well.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the biker smiled, “if you get a chance, tell him Guardrail says hi.” He finished boiling water, and after stirring in the powder handed them each a mug of hot chocolate. Nathaniel had never been more grateful for a cup of sugary nonsense. “So uh, who are you guys?”

“Co-workers, we’re both lawyers.”

“Y-yes. I found out that Nathaniel here had never been camping before and I just felt so bad for him that we had to go. His father is as mean as my father.” Guardrail handed Darryl a kleenex.

“But didn’t you go camping with your father Darryl?”

“No,” Darryl continued to cry and Guardrail brought him an entire box of kleenex, “Okay, maybe once or twice. But it was no fun. He was just mean like he always was. I went camping with my grandfather and it was the best experience of my life or one of them. We’d go fishing, and canoeing, and at night he would always tell me old Chippewa folktales around the campfire. It was the only time, the only time I really got to feel like a kid. And now I want to be able to share that with my daughter. But I’m useless. I can’t do anything. Madison deserves to feel the way my grandfather made me feel,” Darryl took a deep breath, “but I’m scared I’m not good enough. That I can’t give her back. What if I make her feel like my dad made me feel.”

“Darryl, your dad sounds like my dad and you don’t make me feel the way my dad makes me feel.”

“Really Nathaniel, that’s one of the kindest things you’ve ever said to me.” Darryl gave him a big unsolicited hug. Nathaniel responded by patting his back the way one would swat a fly.

“Well, it’s not a long list so don’t get too comfortable. Though probably longer than the list of kind things my own father has said to me.” Nathaniel frowned at the memories.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Darryl asked, Nathaniel was still unsure of what to say.

“Okay, we’re gonna need more hot chocolate.” Guardrail finally broke the awkward silence.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! As usual I own none of these characters. Thank you for reading. Positive or negative I'm dying for feedback.

The car still smelled vaguely of skunk as Nathaniel and Darryl finished packing it up. The good bikers of alcoholics anonymous let them stay in their cabin for the night. Perhaps it was time for Nathaniel to stop judging people so harshly based on appearances. He was impressed by these bikers and he was impressed by very few people. After a night of venting Darryl was feeling a bit better about himself, and Nathaniel was too. It’s always a challenge to understand one’s personal biases as unfounded assumptions. If he learned anything it was that he had a lot to learn. Maybe it wouldn’t kill Nathaniel to be a bit kinder to his employees. It’s not as though anything could make them less productive.

“Maybe I should get a camper,” Darryl considered as they shoved the dilapidated tent into the trunk of the car, “Might be better for Madison.”

“Either way, keep the instructions.”

“Good point. You know, aside from being soaked and everything smelling like skunk, I’d say this was a successful camping trip.”

“How exactly do you quantify success in terms of a camping trip?”

“We connected with nature,” Darryl scratched a mosquito bite on his leg. He had plenty to choose from. “And with each other.”

“I guess I won’t forget this experience.” Nathaniel stated, somehow the smell of skunk had seeped into the car and everything stank. He would have to wash his clothes several times if he had any hope of getting the stink out. And yet, somehow, he felt good as they got into the car.

“Me neither,” Darryl smiled as he started the car. Once again 80’s music started blasting from the radio, but this time Nathaniel had to fight the urge to sing along.


End file.
